Died within minutes

The Chief Coroner has found that the 29 dead miners in Pike River died within minutes of the initial explosion. While not the final word on the disaster, it is reassuring to family and friends that any suffering was relatively brief.

Chief Coroner Neil MacLean found the Pike River miners would have died either from the impact of the blast or from the poisonous atmosphere it created in the mine.

Evidence showed those that survived the explosion would have lost consciousness and died from hypoxic hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, within minutes, he said.

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Comments (38)

IHStewart

I agree. I think that we all need to stop and think about going back into this mne. The coal is an important national asset, lets look at open cast mining it and enviromental rehabilitation after the fact. My thoughts are with the families today.

IHStewart

All the coroner has said is that they are dead, we already know that.
They have no way to confirm whether they survived the initial blast or not, what we do know is that sections of the mine were completely unaffected by ALL of the explosions. There is no way to know the nature of the fate of the men until someone goes down there.

You can open cast it. FFS if you live in Auckland go for a walk at three kings. Diging a hole is not a problem.

No I live in Greymouth, and I am telling you it is a stupid and ignorant position for anyone to hold, it will never happen.
It is uneconomic and it is environmentally unacceptable, it is just pub talk and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

nasska

Does anyone know whether the coal can be accessed from a different direction? I seem to remember some expert stating that as the mine sloped upwards it was always going to be a challenge to pull out the methane.

Hopefully I don’t reignite the green vs progress debate but since permission to mine was only grudgingly given access through the National Park could make extraction easier. If so surely DOC can be coerced to allow better entry subject to reasonable conditions.

tvb

Oh well the coal stays in the ground for another generation to mine. Never mind we are borrowing money instead, the next generation can pay off the debt with coal and other minerals we will not mine. I don’t care it is money in the bank and a one-off asset to liquidate.

Do we (the public) really need to know what the coroners verdict is?, the media slime have milked this tragedy far enough.

It is time that they left the families alone to get on with rebuilding their lives, it is time that our media showed some respect, I imagine that the people of the West Coast have had enough of Jack Tame and his microphone polluting their streets.

side show bob

What I know about mining you could fit on a postage stamp but I do know that with half the mines in Aussie now under water the coal we can produce will be money for jam. I know one can not start a mine overnight but all stops should be pulled out. Of course the howls of outrage will come from the usual suspects but outrage won’t fill an empty stomach. What is it now? 300 mill a week, the devil will come one day for his pound of flesh I hope his diet includes melon, they should be eaten first.

side show bob, what people don’t understand about environmentalists is that the type of coal mine determines the level of their opposition. The Pike River coal was to be used in the production of steel, something many ‘greenies’ don’t have too much issue with.
So if the coal in this field can be extracted in a way that doesn’t wreck the Paparoa national park (and it can) there will be no need for the devil to eat environmentalists first when he comes for “his pound of flesh”!!

side show bob

Sorry Shunda have issues with these people. They scream and jump up and down about my farting cows but say very little about us selling coal to overseas interests. The same two bobs had a protest the other day about oil exploration and when finished got in their cars and drove home, go figure. I’m all for the environment it’s the hypocrisy that pisses me off.

Blue Coast

SB
I to am a Coaster and I concur with your thoughts. Pike River would have done the sums and at the end of the day elected to tunnel.
I have no problem with that at all provided all safety issues where sorted. I have never worked in a mine but I have been in Dobson, Strongman, Rewanui and almost every private mine on the Coast. This was 25 years ago but my reason for the visit was “risk” so I have a little idea of what can happen.

I spoke to my very eldery Coaster Dad the day of the explosion and we both agreed no one would have lived through the first blast.
I have used explosives and know what they can do in a confined space.

The Police guy in charge was 100% correct and he needs some kudows and not a bagging from the MSM.

Overall I am very proud on how the Coasters handled this disaster and the local Mayor needs a medal. I know he has bugger all sleep since the dreaded day.

ross

I think Police mislead the families of the victims and the public. At no stage did police say that the men died quickly but apparently that’s what happened. So why did police give the familiies false hope by saying the men could still be alive? Police look incompetent out of the coroner’s inquest.

Johnboy

ross

According to the Herald, “It was known ‘at a very early stage’ that it was unlikely bodies would ever be recovered from the mine and identified through DNA testing and other scientific proceedures, he [the coroner]said”. Hmmmm, that’s not what police were saying at the time. At a very early stage, police were indicating the men could still be alive.

Dexter

AndyC

Sorry but I’m with Ross on this one. What were the Police going to say. “Sorry, but we have every reason to believe they are all dead.” Of course not. Correct me if I am wrong here but AFAIK in none of the media brefings did they give any indication of conditions inside the mine, the temperature , likely atmosphere or survivability chances. I honestly believe that they took breifings from their experts who told them it was a body recovery exercise from day one.
The police knew of the Hypoxic atmosphere from one of the guys who got out, and he lost the plot from CO poisioning. The first I heard about him ripping off his breathing device due to confusion was today.
The police already knew that and quickly worked out that this was in the first few seconds of the blast. They will have assumed, probably correctly that CO would have taken the rest before the first Ambulance had arrived.

There won’t be any bodies found unfortunately. In the explosions, being in the mine shaft would have been much like standing in a volcano’s crater when it had an explosion and no safer. You would have been pulverised and incinerated all at once by debris and flame in a confined space. Its a truly horrendous way to die and you truly have to feel for the families who will never see the remains (indistinguishable amongst the other debris).

I wonder if the faultline crossing the shaft was a natural conduit for methane, that then built up to combustible levels.

As this link below of April 2010 West Virginia US coal mine disaster shows private coal mining companies have poor safety standards even neglecting safety issues. The consequence over year lead to many fatalities all over the world in that sector of industry.

Pike River didn’t produce enough for the company. Financial and operational stress was obviously known to many. Mr Brownlee having the position of supervisory authority -why didn’t you stop Pike River temporarily for safety checks ?

Why in this country are ministers not accountable for their inactions ?

OECD rank 22 kiwi

Thomas the Unbeliever

Agree with OECD. Lots of people die in accidents.

I work with the victims of accidents. Such tragedy (sudden and unexpected death/serious injury) is common. However most victims/families do not live out that tragedy in a storm of media: all feeding the voyeuristic urge that lurks inside us all. Most victims/families do not get the sort of support (financial, social and emotional) that the Pike River families are getting. They struggle on alone and unnoticed.

The events at Pike River are tragic – and coronial and other inquests are a necessary response to that tragedy. Most of the comments made outside of those processes are simply ill-informed.

The little information that was disclosed at the coronial inquest shows just a glimpse of how information was available to the decision-makers at Pike River but was not widely circulated in the media (for whatever reason). Most of the opinions paraded across the media as events at Pike River unfolded were not supported by fact – notwithstanding their emotional honesty.

Of one thing I am sure.: the people on the ground at Pike River tasked with making decisions had a lot more information to inform their decisions than the commentators who have sat in judgement of those decisions.

Scott

A very interesting post DPF. I have been very sceptical of the police response from day one and still feel the same.

My reservations about the whole thing are these —
why did it take two hours before mine headquarters knew that an explosion had occurred? I would have thought with modern technology there should have been some sort of instant early warning system?

What is the procedure, the standard operating procedure, if an explosion occurs? Should rescuers have gone in straight away, which I understand has been the practice in days gone by?

It seems very strange that in an emergency like this one, in a specialised environment like a mine, the police were called in to run the rescue operation. Certainly as far as I could tell on television, the police officer involved appeared to be a possum in the headlights, was overly concerned about the safety of the rescuers, and did not appear to have any urgency about going straight in and rescuing anyone who might be clinging to life with a gas mask on his face.

Is getting in “experts” the best solution to what is a very practical urgent problem? The feeling I have is that experts don’t like to be wrong. Sending someone in to risk their life there is a high chance of being wrong. So experts are most likely to be cautious. I mean nothing can go wrong if rescuers are not sent in. If you do nothing you can’t be wrong. On the other hand if you do nothing then 29 guys in the mine are not going to get rescued. So I wonder whether a few brave men of action might outweigh 100 cautious experts?
Now those experts are now pronouncing judgement that their judgement was right. Is there any possibility that there were miners still alive many hours after the explosion? We don’t know and will never know unless someone actually goes into the mine.

I could be completely wrong on all of this. My own gut feeling is that when the chips are down and I was stuck in a mine I’m not sure that I would be reassured knowing that the police and experts were on their way.

Dexter

backster

GEO KIWI;……..”There won’t be any bodies found unfortunately. In the explosions, being in the mine shaft would have been much like standing in a volcano’s crater when it had an explosion and no safer. You would have been pulverised and incinerated all at once by debris and flame in a confined space. ”

I heard a news item recently in which it was stated cameras had been sent down and bodies intact were spotted.

I spoke to a family member of a deceased miner the other day and he said the video footage showed no damage to rock dust bags on a plastic wrapped pallet, drums standing upright and timber all stacked neatly.
The families had to go through the official information act to get this information.
Why were they lied to?
We now know that parts of the mine were unaffected by all of the explosions, the families have a very rational reason to believe that at least some of the men can be recovered.
What they are now thinking is that part of the mine was protected due to some sort of cave in.

kiwi in america

Scott

Hi Dexter
this is what is so annoying about Kiwi blog. I put down some points. You just dismiss them as a rant. That is discourteous and rude. You should apologise. You would never speak to me that way to my face. Try not to be so rude and be more thoughtful next time.

Dexter

Scott, why the Police didn’t send rescuers rushing in like lemmings to die one after another has been tediously explained countless times in all the previous Pike River threads, as has why they are in charge of SAR operations in this country. Go and read them rather than derailing this one with the same spurious and thoroughly debunked claims.

If you didn’t follow them then I truly apologise, and I am sure you are very intimidating face to face…